Market Place

Digital Access

Home Delivery

Local news, prep sports, Chicago sports, local and regional entertainment, business, home and lifestyle, food, classified and more! News you use every day! Daily, Daily including the e-Edition or e-Edition only.

Text Alerts

Choose your news! Select the text alerts you want to receive: breaking news, prep sports scores, school closings, weather, and more. Text alerts are a free service from SaukValley.com, but text rates may apply.

Student of the Month Blake Shipman

Rock Falls' September Student of the Month Blake Shipman will play Uncle Stanley in the school's theatrical production of "George Washington Slept Here."

Blake Shipman, a 17-year-old senior at Rock Falls High School, is the September Student of the Month. He is the son of Stacey and Laurie Shipman. His sister is Brittney, 11.

Favorite class: Psychology. I love to discover how the human mind works.

Top teachers: It is too hard to pick one, so I have three: Tiffany Purdy, chemistry; Mark Truesdell, sociology; Elizabeth Judd, band. All of these people have helped me prepare for college the most in my past 4 years at Rock Falls High School.

Extracurricular: Band, choir, captain of the varsity scholastic bowl team, president of the National Honor Society, treasurer of the thespian troupe, BLIND, BLAST, and the fall play

After graduation: After graduation, I plan to attend Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, to study music therapy.

Paycheck: I am a librarian at the Rock Falls Public Library. I love the people I work with and I love the people I meet.

BFF: Samuel Menez; Samuel and I have been friends since my seventh-grade year. We think a lot alike and both share a love for Dr. Who.

Favorite music group: Coldplay

Actor: Boris Karloff

Movie: "The Green Mile"

Hobbies: Singing with my barbershop quartet, "The bad brasses". (All of us also play a brass instrument.)

Game: Baseball

Food: Anything made by my mom

Fear: Failure

What makes my blood boil: Ignorant people

Music that makes my skin crawl: I listen to a lot of everything, so I don't have a type that makes my skin crawl.

Haunts: Rock Falls High School. I am always there doing some type of activity, be it jazz band or play practice or scholastic bowl practice.

Survival guide: Be proactive. Don't wait for opportunities to come to you. You go to them.

Useless knowledge: The Matrix

I am in the dictionary next to: Introverted

Secret twin: People say I am like Blake Shelton because our names are so close, but I say I am more like Groucho Marx because I always have a sly comment for everything.

Personal trivia: I was hit by a school bus in the eighth grade.

Dream job: I would want to be a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I can't imagine how big of a responsibility that would be.

Trading spaces: I would go to Europe. World War II interests me a lot, so I would love to see some of the battle sites or war memorials.

Trading places: I would love to trade with Pope Pius XII. After studying what he went through being the pope during World War II, it would be an amazing experience to feel what it was like.

Read this: "The Kennedy Detail" is a book that provides a new look into the presidency during the Kennedy administration.

Shout to: All the Marching Rockets and the Rock River Valley Barbershop Chorus members.